Lessing contra Goeze: The Case for Rhetoric

Abstract

Lessing begins his last drama Nathan the Wise with the invitation: “Enter, for here reside the gods.” With these words, Lessing points to the moral function of drama. What is perhaps less immediately apparent is the fact that this invitation constitutes a response to the theological polemic of the Lutheran Minister Johan Melchior Goeze. My analysis of Goeze’s attack on the theatre showed he was informed both by a strong faith in the power of rhetoric and by a rejection of rhetoric which was based on Wolffian principles. These contradictory views reappear in his attack on Lessing’s literary style and logical argumentation.

“I am thirsting for a composer,”said an innovator to his disciple,“who would learn my ideas from me and transpose them into language: that way, I should reach men’ ears and hearts far better...With music one can seduce men to every error and every truth: who could refute a tone?”—“Then you would like to be considered irrefutable?”said his disciple.

The innovator replied: “I wish for the seedling to become a tree. For the doctrine to become a tree, it has to be believed; for it to be believed, it has to be considered irrefutable. The tree needs storms, doubts, worms, and nastines to reveal the nature and strength of the seedling; let it break if it is not strong enough. But a seedling can only be destroyed—not refuted.”

When he had said that, his disciple cried impetuously: “But I believe in your cause and consider it so strong that I shall say everything that I have in my mind against it.”Nietzsche,The Gay Science#106